Sunshine Coast Society for the Hunting, Recognition and Observation of Mushrooms (SHROOM) is presenting its eighth annual mushroom festival Oct. 14 to 16.
The festival kicks off Friday night at Roberts Creek Hall, featuring this year’s guest Daniel Winkler (www.mushroaming.com). In his talk and slide show, Winkler will share his stunning images with entertaining and educational stories from his journeys. The hunting grounds range from dark mountain forests and vast alpine meadows, to village markets, restaurants and home kitchens. You will encounter many famous and familiar mushrooms in exotic places you never expected. The fancy flavourful mushrooms will be accompanied by fascinatingly odd fungal fellows, some of them stinky, slimy and incredibly beautiful, others eerily strange and more precious than gold.
On Saturday, Oct. 15, the main event takes place in the Madeira Park Community Hall. Tables in the hall will be loaded with hundreds of local species, some edible, many not, some with incredible medicinal properties. Knowledgeable members of SHROOM will be helping the public to safely identify each mushroom. Bring your interesting fungal finds to the festival and experts will help you identify them.
Vendors will be selling local food items, books and crafts, many of them mushroom oriented. There will also be cooking demonstrations and tastings, using some of the choice local mushrooms that grow here on the Coast. Raffle tickets will be on sale for gift baskets and prizes, many of them getaway packages to local resorts that include meals and/or accommodation.
Many local restaurants are sponsors of the festival, offering special mushroom-based menu items before, during and after that weekend. Check www.scshroom.org to see which restaurants and view their menus.
On Sunday, Oct. 16, Winkler will lead a guided mushroom foray in the local mountains. After the foray, the group will gather where local members will prepare and serve the bounty that was found on the foray.
The foray is always very popular and is limited to a maximum of 30 individuals. Tickets are for sale at www.scshroom.org and at the festival. Cost is $30 per person.
